this, because of his association with Brigitte. If he can give us that,
we’ll be halfway there.
As for the other two, that may prove more difficult.
Aanu is a pile of bones in the hospital wing. I have to wonder if his
brain will actually grow back, and if it does, if he will be able to use it.
What happens when you’ve been dead for four thousand years? What
does it do to your memory? Is it possible to recover from that thorough
a desecration? Can the healing abilities manifested in myself and Lucien
aid his regeneration? I guess we’ll find out. Though Lucien may
not be a great help, given his condition. He tries to hide it, but I can tell
his confrontation with Ialdaboth took its toll.
Ruha seems to be out of the picture. But he is also within me.
Ruha and the Senior were lovers once, and his memories now lurk in
the depths of my memory. I have sought—and failed—to find them. I
have no choice but to seek again.
I will. I will find a way to save the Children, to restore their mortality.
And I will find a way to kill Ialdaboth, if I have to die to do it.
And I might die. I can sense him, and his minions are already
here, lurking around the margins of the Underground. I have provided
what protection I can, all that is within my power. But he is strong, and
he is dark, and I don’t know how long I can stand against him.
Rafael
Light is sweet, and it pleases the eyes to see the sun. However
many years a man may live, let him enjoy them all.
Ecclesiastes 11:7-8
In the revivification of the red cells we seem to have found a
reaction between catalyst A and catalyst B, when combined in
proper proportions. Frankly, the involvement of Nicholas’ blood
in this formula surprises me.
Email—Dr. Jarod Greene
to Julian Cavanaugh
The one who feeds from life without diminishing it—he will be
the one who changes everything. Some may be inclined to call him
Messiah.
The Book of Changing Blood
One
With the coming of dusk, Rafael woke and, as he did every time
he slid out of the daytime Sleep, wondered if he was still a vampire.
He must be, though. Otherwise he would be craving a nice, juicy
T-bone instead of a good mouthful of blood. Even now, after four years,
the thought revolted him. Some days it was all he could do to eat enough
to stay alive. Some days it occurred to him to wonder if he was the
world’s only anorexic vampire.
With those ever-present questions asked and set aside for the
day, he was free to move on to other puzzlements. Like where the hell
was he?
He sat up, shoving a hand through his hair. Damned hair, anyway.
It would all be sticking straight up now—not that he cared. He was
more concerned about getting the hell out of here. But when he tried to
move the other arm, he found he couldn’t past a certain point.
He looked at it and saw a needle taped into the bend of his elbow,
plastic tubing leading from it to a bag of garnet blood hanging on a
metal hanger like they had in hospitals. The blood had moved nearly all
the way down the tube, and as he watched, it filled the tube completely.
A moment later, he felt it go into his veins. Cold, and strange, but it
soothed the hunger that had begun to grow. An intriguing solution. He
could go for this on a permanent basis. Ialdaboth would never allow it,
though. He wanted those in his enclave to take hot blood fresh from
the throat of a preferably innocent victim.
Ialdaboth was a prick.
“Good morning,” said a male voice, and Rafael jumped, afraid
someone had just read his last thought. He’d had too many similar
thoughts over the past few years, and had always been terrified someone
would overhear and have him killed. Or maybe he’d hoped someone
would overhear and have him killed. He wasn’t entirely sure.
But the person who’d spoken was unfamiliar. Something about
him reminded him of Ialdaboth, an aura of some kind, but the resemblance
ended there. This guy, Rafael was certain, was not a prick.
“Thank you,” the big man said, stepping closer to the bed.
He was tall, with thin scars on his face and a prominent nose that
looked like it had been broken two or fifteen times. He had fresh wounds
on his face, too—gashes down his right cheek and a partially healed
laceration across his forehead. His skin had a gray, waxy pallor. His
blue eyes, though, were bright and clear.
“How are you feeling?” he asked.
Rafael didn’t feel like answering the question. “Who the hell are
you?”
“Lucien.”
“Where am I?”
“New York City. Sort of.”
Rafael took a minute to absorb that. The last thing he remembered,
he’d been standing in front of a cave in Romania. Guarding the
cave, technically, though he’d done a piss-poor job of it. There’d been
that girl, the one with the breasts
“How long have I been unconscious?”
“About three days.” The guy, Lucien, was standing next to the
bed now, towering over him, arms crossed over his broad chest. “Sorry
about that, but I had to keep you under for a while. We had too much
shit going down to worry about what you were up to.”
“You kept me under? How does that work?”
“Quite well, apparently.” He gestured toward the IV tube. “That
going down okay?”
“Fine.” The efficiency of the method surprised him. His hunger
had faded almost immediately. He was used to having to fight horrible,
raging hunger as long as possible, before it drove him to feed. A few
times, he’d gone days without feeding at all, finding it easier to go off in
a blinding rage than to be aware of what he was doing.
“You’re lucky you’re here,” Lucien said, a wry grin on his mouth.
“You’re pretty screwed up in the head.”
“You’re pretty damned nosy.” Rafael’s reaction came more from
indignation than fear.
“Don’t worry. You’re safe here. Definitely safer than you were in
Romania. So what’s your name?”
“Rafael.”
Lucien nodded. “Your given name, or one you picked later?”
“Does it matter?”
“No.”
“Then I picked it later. I didn’t care for my given name.”
“Which was?”
“None of your damned business.”
Lucien laughed. “That’s an odd name.”
Rafael was starting to get tired of this nonsense. “So do I get to
leave at some point, or are you planning to kill me, or what?”
“That’s up to you.” Lucien looked toward the door. “Here comes
the doctor.”
The door opened, and another man entered. This one was a mor-
tal—Rafael could tell from the smell. He wore a white lab coat and
carried a clipboard. He had brown, slightly receding hair and wire-
rimmed glasses, as well as a set of prominent, fairly fresh teeth marks
on his neck.
“You’re awake,” he said. “Good.”
“Who’s been cho
mping on you?” Rafael said, not sure what inspired
this brashness. Maybe just the knowledge that he didn’t have to
kill anyone today, and that no one was, apparently, planning on killing
him, either.
The man grinned. “My girlfriend.” He held out a hand. “I’m Dr.
Greene.”
“Rafael.” Grudgingly, he shook the offered hand.
“Hmm. How long have you been a vampire?”
“About four years.”
The doctor jotted notes in his chart. “How old were you when you
were Turned?”
“Is that your business?”
Dr. Greene smiled patiently. “I’m your doctor, as of now. Vampires
don’t have blood pressure, not much of a heart rate most of the
time, and forget about trying to figure out anything based on blood
sugar levels. So, yes, it’s my business.”
Rafael frowned. “I was seventeen.”
“Ah. That explains a lot.”
Rafael wondered what, exactly, it explained, but decided he’d
rather not know. “Anything else?”
“That’s it for now. I’ll get back to you if I have any more questions.”
With a polite smile, he turned his attention to the chart, setting it
down on the counter by the wall and making notes.
“He’s awake. Cool.” A new voice had joined the fray in the small
room, which was quickly becoming crowded. Rafael looked toward
the door to see a pretty, buxom young woman with wide, uptilted green
eyes and black hair. She smiled brightly. “Hey.”
“Hey,” he answered. “I know you. You’re the bitch who knocked
me out.”
Her smile widened. “I’ll do it again, too, if you keep calling me a
bitch.”
“You knocked me unconscious and dragged me across the ocean,”
he said, but he really wasn’t sure he was all that upset about it.
She sauntered across the room to stand next to him. The slinky
walk didn’t seem to be put-on at all—rather it seemed to be her natural
way of moving, as if it had something to do with the way her joints
were put together.
“Tell the truth,” she said. “You wanted me to.”
“Maybe.”
She leaned a little closer, giving him an intriguing view of her
cleavage. His body responded, twitching and hardening in all the right
places. He had the sex drive of a seventeen-year-old, and he wasn’t
afraid to use it.
Her gaze locked with his. “I’m Sasha.”
“Rafael.” She was definitely an older woman. At least a century
older. “Thanks for not killing me.”
Lucien cleared his throat. Rafael looked up to see him and the
doctor watching with interest.
“Shall we leave you kids alone?” Lucien asked.
“Absolutely,” said Sasha.
“Let me get that IV out,” said the doctor. Rafael watched as Dr.
Greene deftly pulled the IV from his arm and rolled the rack against
the wall. With a small smile, the doctor gave Rafael a quick salute and
departed. Lucien followed.
“Don’t cause him too much damage,” said Lucien to Sasha, closing
the door behind him.
Rafael looked at her. “Do you have plans to damage me?”
“No, not really.” She bent over him, looking into his eyes from the
uncomfortable distance of two or three inches. “How do you feel?”
“Fine, I guess.” He craned his neck away from her. Her green
eyes had merged into a single, Cyclopsean eyeball in his vision. He
found the image disturbing. “Did you know you’re quite a pain in the
ass?”
She leaned back, grinning. “It’s what I’m best at.”
“Then you don’t need any more practice.” He let his gaze slide
down her body, resting finally on the cleavage trying to burst out of her
blouse. “Are you good at anything else?”
Her smile went hot. His body followed suit, but he had other plans.
Sasha bent close again, her breasts mounding against his chest, her lips
fluttering millimeters from his own.
He grabbed the lamp from the bedside table and whacked her
over the head with it. She slumped.
“That’s for Romania, you annoying little bitch.”
He crawled out from under her unconscious body, arranged her
comfortably on the bed, and slipped out into the hallway.
He didn’t get far. Before he’d walked three yards down the corridor,
Lucien appeared in front of him. “Where do you think you’re
going?”
“Somewhere that girl isn’t,” Rafael shot back.
To his surprise, Lucien smiled. “Sorry. I thought you liked her.
C’mon. I think it’s time you met Julian.”
The quick briefing Lucien gave him on the way to Julian’s office
came as a surprise.
“You mean you’re not the Senior at this enclave?” Rafael asked.
“No. Julian was already established when I arrived.”
“Why didn’t you kill him and take over? You’re, like, what, a thousand
years old?”
“Twelve, but who’s counting?”
Rafael stopped abruptly. “You’re Ialdaboth’s brother.”
“Half-brother.”
“Belial?”
“That’s correct.”
Rafael shook his head. “You should be the Senior here.”
“That’s not the way I work.”
They walked a little further along the corridor before Lucien stopped
and knocked on one of the doors. At the muffled “Come in,” they
entered.
Meeting Julian, Rafael almost understood. Julian was quite old—
not nearly as old as Lucien, but still old—and a strange aura surrounded
him. He was also, Rafael noticed when they shook hands, vaguely
warm.
“Have a seat,” he said. Rafael sat on the couch, Lucien settling
next to him. “I need to ask you some questions,” Julian went on.
“Ask away.”
“First, let me apologize for the way we kidnapped you. Sasha had
no permission to do what she did.”
Rafael shrugged. “No problem. I was about five minutes away
from getting killed over there, anyway.”
Julian cocked an eyebrow. “Really. Why?”
“I’m really not a very good vampire. Much less a nasty, evil one.”
“So what was keeping you alive?”
“Sex, mostly.”
Lucien was laughing behind his hand. Julian gave him a cold look.
“I have a feeling this story might not be all that amusing, Lucien.”
Julian’s apparent concern for him caught Rafael by surprise. “I
guess it depends on how you look at it,” he said. He cleared his throat.
He didn’t really want to go into this right now, not when it had just
occurred to him that he might be lucky enough never to see Brigitte
again. “So what did you want to ask me?”
Julian’s demeanor went abruptly businesslike. “What can you tell
us about the cave you were guarding?”
“Not much. There was something important in there, that’s all I
know.”
“They never told you the significance of that cave?” Lucien was
surprised.
“I’m a four-year-old vampire flunkie who was failing initiation.
Why would they tell me anything? Brigitte put me ther
e to get me out
of the way.”
Julian eyed him curiously. “So you don’t know anything about the
bones?”
“I heard something about some bones, yeah. I don’t know whose
they were, though. Look, I’ve spent the past four years just trying to
keep my ass out of trouble. I didn’t ask questions, I didn’t cause problems.
It kept me alive. They told me to go stand in front of the cave
every night for a month, so I did. I’d be there right now if that little bitch
hadn’t conked me over the head.” He paused. “That reminds me. Somebody
might want to go check on her.”
“Why?” said Lucien.
“I clocked her with a lamp.”
Julian rolled his eyes.
Lucien, stifling laughter, rose. “I’ll go.”
“We’ll come with you. I want Rafael to see what was in that
cave.”
Rafael had to admit he was curious, but he wasn’t prepared for
what he saw.
Julian led him to a room in the hospital wing, not far from where
he’d woken up. Inside the room was a large, cylindrical metal tube
with small round windows. It reminded Rafael of a submarine.
“What the hell is that?”
“It’s a hyperbaric chamber,” Lucien answered. “It’s full of pure,
pressurized oxygen, to bathe the tissues of whoever’s inside. Hospitals
use it in burn wards, and to help speed up healing of other kinds of
injuries. Also for people who’ve been exposed to carbon monoxide.”
Julian quirked an eyebrow at him. Lucien shrugged. “I paid attention
to Dr. Greene during that long lecture we got.”
“You’re a better man than I am,” Julian said.
“So what’s inside?” asked Rafael.
Lucien waved toward the chamber. “Take a look.”
Hesitant, Rafael stepped up to the strange, steel cylinder. Still not
sure he wasn’t the butt of some practical joke, he peered back at the
other two men before looking inside.
On a long, low, bench-like table within the chamber lay a human
body. But not quite a body. There was no skin, no hair, and in many
places only partial musculature. The long, flat, pink and red strands of
muscle and connective tissue, with blue and red blood vessels threading
in and out, both fascinated and repulsed him.
“I don’t get it. What’s going on here?”
“That was a bleached-white, four-thousand-year-old skeleton
Knights, Katriena - Vampire Apocalypse Book II.txt Page 9